Extensive offerings at the base of the large Padmasambhava thangka during Guru Bumtsog event, 2024. Photo courtesy of Kopan Nunnery.

For the tenth year in a row, a very large thangka of Padmasambhava (Guru Rinpoche) has been displayed and an auspicious 100,000 tsog offering event (Guru Bumtsog) has taken place at Khachoe Ghakyil Ling (Kopan Nunnery). Every year this event will occur on Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s birthday, December 3, to commemorate Rinpoche’s life and dedicate to fulfill Rinpoche’s wishes. Here we share a report from Ven. Sarah Thresher on this year’s event, and some of the meaningful history. Please also read about the history of the Padmasambhava thangka from  Geshe Ngawang Sangye. 

By Ven. Sarah Thresher

Lama Zopa Rinpoche as a child in Rolwaling. Photo by Tom Weir

Lama Zopa Rinpoche was born at sunrise on a Monday—the last day of the tenth lunar month of the wood bird year (December 3, 1945).[1] He was the fifth of six children, three of whom had died very young. When his mother was five months’ pregnant, she dreamt of entering a large cave with a staircase lined with stone statues of the deity Vajrayogini to whom she paid homage as she ascended, then descended the stairs. On waking, she suspected the child she was bearing could be someone special but told nobody.

Perhaps one of the most interesting facts about Rinpoche’s birth was that he entered this world two months before his previous incarnation, the Lawudo Lama Kunzang Yeshe, had passed away.[2] In fact, Ven Jamyang Wangmo explains in The Lawudo Lama that the first Lawudo Lama actually dreamt of his new incarnation before passing and confided in Charog Lama Kusho Mangde the identity of the young boy who would continue his work for sentient beings.[3] This clearly indicates that Rinpoche was not ordinary but a great highly realized being who intentionally descended to this world to benefit sentient beings.[4]

One of Rinpoche’s many great activities was the creation of numerous holy objects all over the world, including large thangkas that could be displayed at special times and festivals to help purify and create merit. Another of Rinpoche’s great activities was establishing the annual Guru Bumtsog—100,000 tsog offerings to Guru Rinpoche—for the Kopan monks and nuns and local community, where a huge 75 feet high (23m) by 87 feet wide (27m) silk applique thangka of Padmasambhava and surrounding merit field are displayed, along with 21 more exquisite silk applique thangkas of the Twenty-One Taras below.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche checking the progress on the Padmasambhava thangka, December 2012.

Guru Bumtsog: A Celebration of Two Lawudo Lamas

According to Ven. Thubten Tendar, Rinpoche’s close attendant, Rinpoche’s purpose in establishing the Guru Bumtsog was to pray for all His Holiness Dalai Lama’s wishes to be fulfilled, for peace and prosperity in this world and the elimination of all misfortunes and disasters, and for the preservation and spread of the pure Dharma teachings. Since Rinpoche’s passing, the decision was made to hold the Guru Bumtsog on Rinpoche’s birth date of December 3 each year, and to especially dedicate for all Rinpoche’s holy wishes to be fulfilled, and for everything to be auspicious for the Lawudo Lama’s next emanation.

Large Padmasambhava thangka at Kopan Nunnery, December 16, 2023. Photo courtesy of Kopan Monastery.

What makes the event especially significant is that it is very much a collaborative event between the monks from Thame Monastery, Solu Khumbu—the gompa of the first Lawudo Lama and the monastery that Rinpoche first entered as a young child to become monk—and those of Kopan—the monastery and nunnery founded by Lama Zopa Rinpoche this lifetime. With seamless harmony, the two monasteries work together to make the event a success.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche prostrating to the giant Guru Rinpoche thangka during the Guru bumtsok at Khachoe Ghakyil Nunnery, January 2020.

The text used in the Guru Bumtsog is the Sadhana of the Lineage of Awareness-Holders from the Northern Treasures cycle revealed by Rigdzin Godem. The Northern Treasures is the main lineage practiced in the Thamichowa region of Khumbu where Rinpoche comes from and was the main lineage held by the first Lawudo Lama. Since this is a Nyingma lineage that is not practiced at Kopan, it was Rinpoche’s wish that monks from other monasteries who do hold the lineage lead the puja. This is why it is so important that Thame Monastery chant master, monks and ritual-masters work together with the Kopan monks and nuns to make the puja a success.

The grounds of Kopan Nunnery during the Guru Bumtsok event on Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s birthday, December 3, 2024. Photo thanks to Kopan Nunnery.

Not only that, but during the day-long Guru Bumtsog, one section is set aside for the Cham dances and most of these religious dances are taken from the Mani Rimdu Festival held at Thame Monastery every year.[5] It means that Kopan monks are trained by the Thame monks to perform the ritual dancing, and both Thame and Kopan monks perform the Cham dances together. The same is true of the gyaling and ritual music which is performed according to the Thame Solu Khumbu tradition that Rinpoche liked so much.

Please watch a beautiful video of this year’s event:

This year’s Guru Bumtsog was again very special. The Thame monk Lhakpa Tenzin expertly lead the chanting while the presiding lama and special guest was His Eminence Jangtse Choeje Gosok Rinpoche of Sera Me. Gosok Rinpoche knew both Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche from his young days at Buxadaur Refugee Camp, and he told the Kopan monks and nuns about the incredible qualities both Lama and Rinpoche displayed already at that time, and of the exceptional benefit they had brought to this world. It was a visibly moving speech, delivered with a mindfulness that many of the younger sangha may not be aware how truly extraordinary the groundbreaking enlightened activity of Lama and Rinpoche was in this world. May a new emanation of the Lawudo Lama swiftly be revealed to continue the legacy of benefitting numberless sentient beings!

Written by Ven. Sarah Thresher, Nepal, December 4, 2025. Please read more about the rich history of the large Padmasambhava thangka from Geshe Ngawang Sangye. 

[1] See Jamyang Wangmo, The Lawudo Lama, pp. 107-115 for more details. All these dates have been checked with the Tibetan Medical and Astrological Institute in Dharamsala.

[2] The first Lawudo Lama passed away at midnight of the full-moon day of the first month of the fire dog year (Friday, 15 February 1946).

[3] See Lawudo Lama, p.109 and n. 216.

[4] See Lawudo Lama, ch. 13 for more details of the first Lauwdo Lama’s realizations.

[5] Most of the dances are taken from Thame Mani Rimdu tradition, see Jamyang Wangmo Dancing in the Clouds. However two of them—Hashang and Kinkara Skeleton Couple—were taught to Kopan by Geshe Lama Konchog.

Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), is a Tibetan Buddhist organization dedicated to the transmission of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition and values worldwide through teaching, meditation and community service.